It's a mean old scene

 

While I was in Bradford I had a short walk around the shopping centre, if indeed you can now call it that... Since the Broadway Centre opened in 2015, a modern, shiny, slick mall, many of the major retail chains have relocated to that end of the city. That has left the upper part of town rather depleted. 

One of the oldest streets is Ivegate, which used to be wonderful, thriving and thronged, even within my memory. (See HERE for some old photos.) Now it's very run down. There are still some pubs and bars, some quite historic like the Unicorn above and even that seems to be closed. Perhaps it livens up a bit at night but, despite many people's best efforts, shops come and go. There are many empty units and the rest seem to be nothing more than a few charity shops, vape shops and mobile phone retailers. Depressing. 

At the top end of Ivegate lies the Kirkgate Centre, a Brutalist concrete monstrosity (below) that opened in the 1970s, itself replacing a fancy Victorian indoor market. What goes around comes around, eh? This centre is due to be demolished to make way for green space and housing. See HERE. 

The former M&S store, now moved to the Broadway, is already a big hole in the ground, making way for a new market expected to be open in 2023. (See HERE).  To its credit, and against the current back-drop of retail suffering everywhere, not only in Bradford, the city council have taken some bold decisions. Their vision is, as I understand it, to have a smaller, closer-knit retail quarter at the bottom of town (the city is on steep hill, which has never helped its unity) adjacent to the well-established leisure/entertainment quarter of City Park, the theatres and the Media Museum. There may also be some independent and more quirky retail and food and drink outlets in some of the beautiful, historic buildings around the centre. 

The city is looking forward to its reign as 'City of Culture' in 2025 and I guess that has given something of a focus to the redevelopment efforts.